State Power Under Siege: Ukraine’s Consolidation and Russia’s Occupation Strategy

Two harrowing days of travel, first by bus and then by train. Hunger and thirst gnaw at her senses as the listless days of travel climb by at an agonizing pace. Hours and hours spent in a cramped enclosure with Ukrainian kids of various ages. It isn’t until her feet connect with the desolate countryside and her gaze catches on military-grade weapons that the bitter truth is revealed. Sophia, sixteen years old, is not on the relaxing seaside trip that her parents had promised. She is at the Young Army Cadets National Movement: a Russian Training Camp where her instructors are Russian mercenaries trained under the WAGNER to kill tens of thousands of Ukrainian people. (Posted by Save Ukraine.official on Instagram) .

Sophia is one of many innocent Ukrainian children forced to assemble rifles, dig trenches, and handle grenades, among other military duties. To refuse participation brings beatings. The endgame: an enlistment document for the Russian army. After their release from the program, Sophia and thousands of other children wait anxiously to see if their eighteenth birthday includes a draft letter. 

The Young Army Cadets National Movement drew the attention of Nathaniel Raymond from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, who investigates reports of forcibly displaced children following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He uncovered an extensive list of where the children were held through statements, photos, and documents gathered from the Russian Federation itself (Nathaniel A. Raymond 2025). As of early 2023, "they assessed that at least 6,000 children had been taken to camps in temporarily occupied territories in Ukraine and in Russia. There, they faced so-called 'patriotic re-education' that included being prohibited from speaking Ukrainian and being brainwashed with an alternate version of history in which the nation of Ukraine and its culture did not exist" (Nathaniel A. Raymond 2025). This program is just one of many examples of Russia's indoctrination of Ukrainians. From training military personnel to enforcing patriotic coercion, Russia systematically weaponizes vulnerable youth by targeting occupied territories and promoting its agenda. This string of kidnappings is just one of the many ways in which Russia’s ‘wartime measures’ are nothing more than the beginning of long-term colonial techniques of control. Through strategic methods mimicking settler colonialism, Russia has superseded Ukraine’s democracy and corralled the landscape to assert occupation, projecting Russian nationalism over the decades-long struggle for Ukrainian independence. 

To understand how we got here, it's important to reference when the fracture first emerged—during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although more than 90 percent of the Ukrainian population supported independence following the rupture, by the end of the twentieth century, Ukraine continued to struggle with political and social mobilization. One key problem underlying the struggle is lustration, the transitional justice period, particularly widespread in Eastern Europe and especially relevant in Ukraine’s case. It began with the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych and high-ranking officials, many of whom faced bans from their subsequent government positions based on the criteria that they had been involved in corruption (Columbia Journal of Transitional Law, 2019). However, these early ‘lustration’ laws faced significant judicial resistance. Consequently, the efforts to eliminate corruption were hindered, allowing generations of standing presidents—Yanukovych to Poroshenko and most currently Zelensky—to uphold the same patterns of corruption and economic abuse. Consequently, citizens lost confidence in Ukraine, hindering Ukraine’s ability to create a strong unified front against Russian expansionism. During this period of instability, Russia capitalized their resources to wage a large proxy war in Ukraine, with its continued occupation perpetuating a neo-colonist framework through the manipulation of existing communities. 

The threats from an unchecked Russia continue to mimic Soviet era occupation strategies, particularly through democratic suppression. Sergey Kirienko, Russia’s First Deputy Chief of Staff, is a powerful political figure behind these authoritarian policies, which include fixed elections, reconstruction initiatives, and media control in Ukrainian-occupied territories. This began with the orchestration of,  “sham referendums in which Moscow claimed Ukrainians under Russian occupation had voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia.”(Troianovski 2025) Kirienko has simultaneously weaponized his political prowess to engineer popular support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion. 

The administration has integrated the Public Projects Directorate, implementing patriotic initiatives overseen by Mr. Kiriyenko. “Starting in first grade, students across Russia will sit through weekly classes featuring war movies and virtual tours through Crimea… In addition to a regular flag-raising ceremony they will have lessons celebrating Russia’s rebirth under President Putin.”(Troianovski 2022) At the same time, the presidential administration is participating in the development of a new “scientific communism”(Pertsev 2023), reinterpreting the Soviet-era educational framework to re-evaluate socioeconomic laws and methods necessary for the political context. These policies are enforced with the full weight of the Russian state, as “thousands of antiwar Russians [being] prosecuted or forced into exile in an effort that analysts.. and former colleagues of Mr.Kiriyenki believe to be largely coordinated by him.”(Troian 2025) This systemic repression reflects a pattern within the Russian government, consolidating political control in order to achieve broad strategic objectives, including the subjugation of the Ukrainian state. 

Since 2022, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee displacement and occupation. As the exodus continues, Russia has granted permanent residency statuses for Russian families, known as imported families. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on September 10, 2025, Russia required residents of the Ukrainian oblasts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk to obtain Russian passports or be classified as “foreigners” in territories that were formerly their homes. This policy of forced displacement forms part of a broader effort to erase Ukrainian identity in occupied regions. As populations are systematically replaced and Ukraine’s legal foundations are undermined—the cultural fabric of arts, language, and expression is simultaneously being transformed. By September 2024, “UNESCO has officially verified damage to 438 cultural sites in Ukraine, including religious buildings, museums, libraries, and monuments.” (Sapuppo 2024) Continued Russian bombardment has inflicted serious debilitating effects upon these sites, fracturing the symbolic foundations of Ukrainian cultural identity and effectively erasing ties for people’ access to knowledge of their historical origin. 

This process of erasure operates alongside the abduction of children, the importation of settlers, and the systematic elimination of Ukrainian cultural identity. Taken together, these mechanisms—administrative coercion, strategic violence, and legal manipulation—reflect a coherent strategy rather than ad hoc wartime measures. What is unfolding currently in occupied Ukraine models a deliberate plan of permanent transformation, rooted in the glorification of Russian sovereignty at the expense of hollowing out Ukrainian existence from within. 

Works Cited:

—Casty, R. (2019, December 9). Developments in Ukrainian lustration. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law Bulletin.

—Instagram. (n.d.). Reel.

—New York Times. (2022, July 16). Russia uses schools to spread propaganda and indoctrination. The New York Times.

—New York Times. (2025, August 10). Putin, Russia, Ukraine war, Sergei Kiriyenko. The New York Times.

—Raymond, N. A. (2025, December 3). Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. Yale School of Public Health.

—Troian, M. (n.d.). Thresholds of survival and resistance in occupied Ukraine. Center for Strategic and International Studies.

—Atlantic Council. (n.d.). Countering Russia’s campaign to erase Ukrainian cultural identity. Atlantic Council.

—Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (2023). How Kiriyenko is winning Putin’s ear. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.